Monthly Archives: March 2010

By Melanie Nathan 3-28-10. The Florida Legislature heeded its conscience, not to mention great advocacy from a coalition of 80 organizations under the banner, “Florida Together,” including noise makers from outside the State such as here at Lezgetreal, where we called for a boycott of filming in Florida State , by removing the language from proposed tax credit bills that provided incentives for filmmakers only if they avoided depictions of “nontraditional family values.”

Republican Stephen Precourt proposed a new bill, which was being considered in the Florida house, which would make movie and TV productions with gay characters ineligible for a tax credit.

Precourt claimed he was not targeting the gay community, yet provides a moronic contradiction when he qualifies his statement by saying that he does not want to invest public dollars in shows with gay characters.

“We support bringing film jobs to Florida,” Georg Ketelhohn, chair of Florida Together, in a press statement. “We just don’t think literally paying someone to reinforce negative stereotypes is good public policy.” So the clause was scraped.

“I am proud the Legislature saw the difference between creating jobs in Florida and rewarding discrimination. Florida Together did good work keeping this issue in the spotlight and working with us to fix it,” said Senator David Aronberg, in Florida Together’s news release.

For us at LGR this hails another victory reflecting that US equality activists are on alert and will do all possible to expose, oppose and defeat hate and discrimination in our battle to win equality.

This presents yet another example of why The Civil Rights Act MUST be amended to include sexual orientation. Short of that we will always be fighting for piecemeal legislation, Repeal of this DOMA and maybe more DOMA’s to come, fighting battles at State level that ought not be reposed for discrimination.

Face Book and the Internet, News wires and Bloggers on command, we have found a way to muster up our forces, ad hoc and when needed. If you support equality why not adopt it as your middle name! Many are reflecting their views by doing so already. These are the unsung heroes in our fight,….. keep up the great work.